Novak Djokovic was still a teenager when he exchanged the family home in
Belgrade for a luxury apartment here in Monte Carlo, the site of the world’s
most famous casino. Over the last 15 months, he has transformed his fortunes
on the court too.

Once a mood player who won the occasional jackpot but blew plenty more, he has learnt to control himself and become the highest roller in tennis. And it could get even better: on Wednesday Djokovic embarked on a clay-court campaign which, if successful, will conclude with him completing the grand slam at Roland Garros in just over seven weeks.

The bookmakers have him at 8-5 to pull it off, and if he continues to tick over as smoothly as he did while beating Andreas Seppi — a competent clay-court specialist from Italy — those odds are only likely to shorten.

To clarify, we are not talking about a calendar grand slam – a feat that only Don Budge (in 1938) and Rod Laver (1962 and 1969) have pulled off – but the simultaneous possession of all four major titles. If it happens, people will call it the “Novak slam”.

“There’s been a lot of speculation about that,” Djokovic admitted after his 6-1, 6-4 win over Seppi. “I can’t say that it [the grand slam] runs next to me unnoticed. I definitely look on it as a challenge, something that would mean a lot to me. Roland Garros is one of my highest priorities for this year. But I always like to take one tournament at a time. It’s very important for me to start well here, get some matches under my belt on clay.” Which will not be a problem if he continues to move and strike as seamlessly as he did yesterday.

Djokovic’s main opposition here is likely to come from Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal. (Roger Federer has taken the week off, and no player from outside the top four has won a Masters Series title since November 2010.) Murray was also in prime form in his 6-0, 6-3 demolition of Djokovic’s old friend Viktor Troicki on Tuesday, and will face Julien Benneteau, an experienced French clay-courter, in the first match on centre court on Thursday morning.

As for Nadal, he showed signs of rust on Wednesday against Jarkko Nieminen, which was understandable after a 15-day lay-off forced by trouble in his right knee. “There was nothing very bad, but nothing very good,” he said, in a downbeat assessment of his own performance. “The knee is still there, but I feel I can play with no limitations today.”

When he lacks rhythm, Nadal tends to serve up too many short balls for his opponent to step into, and Nieminen was able to tee off on a few crunching groundstrokes. Not enough to win the match, but enough to make Nadal sweat a little on his way to a 6-4, 6-3 win.

Nadal will play Mikhail Kukushkin this evening, but there was an unexpected loss for the fifth seed David Ferrer, who went down 6-4, 6-4 to the big-hitting Brazilian Thomaz Bellucci.